Climate Change Serves Oil and the Pentagon

Melting polar ice caps is great for the rapacious oil and gas industry. Trump denying climate change and wanting to buy Greenland is actually part of the logic of what drives our military policy. Our guest on this show journalist and historian JP Sottile shines a light into this deep rabbit hole. As he explains, climate change is a byproduct of 70 years of empire. It’s no accident that our bases around the world and Central Command (CENTCOM) are in oil rich areas. And melting ice caps mean more access for our military and to more extraction of resources from the arctic including rare earth elements. And as oil is not as commercially viable as it once was, without taxpayers footing the bill, the price would drop and other energy sources would replace it. So while Americans clearly care and are doing what we can to address climate change, it is vital that military policy (which includes tremendous consumption of fuel) must be made to change.